Retired female jockeys to ride again at Pimlico

Former jockeys Barbara Jo Rubin, left, PJ Cooksey, center, and Mary Russ jokingly show off their muscles in the barn area at Pimlico Race Course, Wednesday, May 12, 2010, in Baltimore. The three, along with other retired female jockeys, will ride in the inaugural Lady Legends for the Cure Race, fea

/ AP

Former jockeys Barbara Jo Rubin, left, PJ Cooksey, center, and Mary Russ jokingly show off their muscles in the barn area at Pimlico Race Course, Wednesday, May 12, 2010, in Baltimore. The three, along with other retired female jockeys, will ride in the inaugural Lady Legends for the Cure Race, featuring retired champion female jockeys, on Friday, May 14, the day before the 135th running of the Preakness horse race. (AP Photo/Rob Carr)

Former jockeys Barbara Jo Rubin, left, PJ Cooksey, center, and Mary Russ jokingly show off their muscles in the barn area at Pimlico Race Course, Wednesday, May 12, 2010, in Baltimore. The three, along with other retired female jockeys, will ride in the inaugural Lady Legends for the Cure Race, featuring retired champion female jockeys, on Friday, May 14, the day before the 135th running of the Preakness horse race. (AP Photo/Rob Carr) (/ AP)

BETH HARRIS, AP Racing Writer

Patti Cooksey is taking her one-day comeback seriously. She's lost weight and has been getting on horses again in a tuneup for the Lady Legends race featuring former female jockeys.

Cooksey is back at Pimlico this week where she was the first woman to ride in the Preakness, finishing sixth aboard Tajawa in 1985. She'll be among eight women riding in Friday's inaugural Lady Legends Race for the Cure, with a focus on breast cancer awareness.

Cooksey is a breast cancer survivor, along with Mary Wiley Wagner, who was among the nation's top apprentice jockeys in 1983. Those two will be joined by Andrea Seefeldt Knight, Barbara Jo Rubin, Mary Russ Tortora, Gwen Jocson, Jennifer Rowland Small, and Cheryl White in the all-female event.

The race will officially count in their career totals and is approved for legalized pari-mutuel wagering. The six-furlong race is worth $30,000.

Cooksey, now 52 and working for the Kentucky Racing Commission, has been retired since 2004 after a 26-year career. She ranks third all-time among female jockeys with 2,137 victories.

She'll ride Cleric, who's coming off a 3 1/2-length victory at Pimlico on May 1.

"I've been working my tail off," Cooksey said. "I can see me not doing anything and then falling off and blowing the whole thing. I hired a trainer, lost 10 pounds, getting solid as a rock and finding my balance. Just getting back on horses, the first one it was a little rocky up there."

Seefeldt Knight is the only other female besides Cooksey to ride in the Preakness, finishing seventh aboard Looming in 1994. She finished 16th in the 1991 Kentucky Derby, one of five women to ride in America's most famous race, along with Cooksey, who was 11th in the 1984 edition.

Rubin was the first woman to win a pari-mutuel race in the U.S. in 1969; Tortora was the first woman to win a Grade 1 stakes race; Jocson won 763 career races from 1989-99; Rowland Small was a pioneering female ride in Maryland during the 1970s; and White was the first black female rider.

Rubin, now 60 and a dressage trainer in Troy, Ill., was supposed to be the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby in 1969, but her horse was scratched, leaving Diane Crump to make history the following year.

Rubin met up with Cooksey, White and Wagner at the stakes barn on Pimlico's backstretch Wednesday, giggling and rolling up their sleeves to show off muscles several yards away from Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas.

"We move a little slower and we get off a little slower," a still slim Rubin said, laughing. "I worked out a couple mornings at the gym. I got on young horses for 1 1/2 months. I couldn't just go jump on these horses."

White, who is 56 and working as a racing official on the fair circuit in California, is worried about spoiling the way she went out of the sport.

"I won my last race," she said. "I retired a winner."

She rode from 1971-99, winning 257 races, including her first on a horse owned by her mother and trained by her father.

Wiley Wagner, who finished her breast cancer treatment last year, rode 275 winners from 1983-97, quitting to raise a family. She lives in Ocala, Fla., where she gallops horses that she and husband own.

"I wasn't going to do it," she said about a comeback. "But hearing Barbara Jo and Patti were going to be there convinced me."

Julie Krone, the most successful female jockey, isn't participating. She competed in a similar event in 2008 at Santa Anita, finishing fifth against her fellow male Hall of Fame riders.

Cooksey, Rubin, White and Wagner swapped stories about their riding days, when they had to change into their riding silks in closets because there was no separate room for women riders.

"It's still a man's sport," Cooksey said.

Also Friday is the second annual Pimlico Jockey Challenge, featuring eight of the nation's top riders competing in four designated races for a $14,000 prize.